The Self Illusion - Susan Blackmore
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- čas přidán 26. 09. 2012
- www.ScienceAndNonduality.com
This is a clip from Susan Blackmore's talk at Science and Nonduality Conference 2012 in The Netherlands.
Sue Blackmore is a psychologist and writer researching consciousness, memes, and anomalous experiences, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. She blogs for the Guardian, and often appears on radio and television. The Meme Machine (1999) has been translated into 16 other languages; more recent books include Conversations on Consciousness (2005), Zen and the Art of Consciousness (2011), and a textbook Consciousness: An Introduction (2nd Ed 2010). www.susanblackmore.co.uk
Dan Dennet also claims that consciousness is an illusion- but he seems to forget that an illusion is a mode of consciousness. The claim that consciousness is an illusion presupposes consciousness, so Dennet has cut off the branch he was sitting on.
Spot on.
In my opinion it’s consciousness that ‘reincarnates’ and who is really who you are, not the complex brain that generates your ‘sense of self’ which of course is illusion but helpful. I’m not a Buddhist but you only have to watch a few NDEs to come to this conclusion. Love ZEN though and the Buddhist ideas.
My best friend died 18 months ago his name is zenn, the past couple of months have been harder than the previous 16. I have been really starting to think God hates me and it's been taking over a bit. Tonight I came across Susan's talks then this video and seen zenns name. I think he brought me to this video to let me know God doesn't hate me and to break me out of this thought cycle. I believe god is real and my best friends spirit and soul is still out there somewhere we will never understand while we live. I miss my best friend like crazy and hope to see him again 1 day
A very nicely done lecture. It brought to mind an idea that has occurred to me many times over the past 40 years or so, the idea of the 10 second man. While most of us agree that in significant ways we are no longer the person (self) we were years and years ago, we tend to maintain that we are the same person we were a few years ago. But it seems that "a few years" is far too long a stretch of time for a continuous self to exist. And the more you meditate or wake up in some sense, the time span during which a continuous self exists grows ever shorter. Down to a few seconds. The self who started writing this comment is no longer here nor ever will be here again. And as she said, one feels a gratitude toward that self and the army of prior selves and a concern for the well being of the selves yet to be manifest. I hope I read this comment at some time in the future without embarrassment.
Bill Porter doubtful dude
Meaning I'm a dude who doubts? Oh well, I'm responding to a person who no longer exists.
Bill Porter meaning you asked a question on an open forum and the evidence seems to suggest you were already doubting .
I couldn't find a question in my original comment.
does it mean that Persona doesn't exist ?? I mean the self or structured person like I'm strong or I'm this and that ?? is it a false construct from the beginning to end ??
Someone always has to bag out here hair! I would suggest that she isn't her hair, so it makes no difference and judging her for it is a distraction and says more about the person that makes a point of it..
I love the way she expresses herself through the colour of her hair. Go for it Susan, brighter the better. :)
wow, in all my years of enquiry I've never heard the nature of the mind described in this way. I like your ideas
Really? It's pretty elementary stuff
All ends in silent awe.
This lovely lady is up there with the best of them. A formidable intellect.
I like the way this lady talks and I have been going down similar paths . I have difficulty meditating my mind is always churning , When I went to a free course on meditation
given by the group whose guru is Sri Chimnoy i was unable to do imagine meditation I have since learned that ten percent of us do not have minds eye images that we can summon . The only way I can produce those type of images is by hallucinogens
My internal dialogue was constant and I don't remember dreams unless on rare occasions they are lucid . There is a mild form of multiple personality happening and I was abused as a kid so I come by that honestly . and I have been a stoner all my adult life I am sixty and my brain is not shot any more than it ever was I used to be a esoteric explorer and I have had quite a few Spiritual experiences . That was the perfect thing for me to hear I know ,I mean we know what she was saying. I tell people I talk to myself because my bullshit detector does not work on internal dialogue .that is and is not a joke at the same time That little lecture confirms a few things I have been playing with .
Rupert Spira asks "am I aware of being aware."
...Along similar discussion about the consciousness of the self.
this reminds me of smoking salvia, and trying to find who was "saying" my thoughts to me
+Teagan Kelk Your ego of course - the socially constructed biocomputer with your name on it and the source of all self-chatter. But your essential core is not your ego - you are not your thoughts. That is why you were able to see a distinction between your thoughts and that which 'has' them, that which observes their coming and going, ie. pure awareness - the root of all being.
An illusion...but ITS A REAL ILLUSION! So obviously it has some reality!
The collapse of several observational strands into a single self through the process of observation is a very similar parallel to the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics
I thought of this some years ago and tried to explain to some people but nobody seemed to understand what was I talking about, it’s good to know there are many people aware of this :)
about last topic, the organism as a machine has evolved through survival of the fittest so the ones that seek survival were more likely to survive. But the “self” does matter if it survives or not although it interferes with the fitness. For example if we now discover the truth it may make us say less likely to survive or less willing to survive in miserable with no end of pain situation and those individuals will simply not pass the genes on. So the idea is you have to put this into the equation as well
Yes, it's likely that most people will have difficulty understanding you when you try to explain these ideas.
Her true self is actually the frog in her throat. ( desperately trying to get a croak in edge ways.)
beautiful awareness :)
Before Self realization, chop wood ,carry water,someone does it.
After Self Realization,chop wood ,carry water,no one does it.
and can be shared and relayed between each other. the desires and beliefs themselves rest in my mind but the effects of those things reach out into the physical world. my desire for love transcends my mind and manifests in a physical human-human relationship. in the relationship we also share our inner states with each other, so they are recognised as real between humans insofar as we can relate to such psychological states.
thanks man. i hope your study of consciousness takes you far.
But the missing punt is that there is a continuum of sense of self, whether "real" or not, that will be there tomorrow.
lose you sense of self via temporal lobe epilepsy, parkinson disease, bad drug trips and you'll soon know what the sense of self is by the realization of what you have lost.
But out of that loss ideally should arise the realization that the sense of self is just a artificial construct to ground one in a "real" world. I've had the experience and it was very eerie and unsettling to say the least.
Would love to hear more on this Susan.
me is not the experience you are focused on, but the emptiness behind, which always stays
Sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees.
I read that people confabulate stories as to why an action happened when they are manipulated in their brains' to action and yet still say they willed it.
But even if we are only our brain and nothing immaterial, brain structures have continuity throught time..so we continue with the same brain...how then we will be someone else? In my viewpoint this clearly doesnt make any sense..the absence of a stream of undivided self doesnt equal with the absence of brain continuity..so then of course we will be the same structure in the future and not somebody entirely different. A car is going to be the same car in the future even if its consists of different parts. (If the parts are going to be the same). I think she is confused
I agree about the re incarnation theory I had the same conclusions
Which self took the video?
Both self and no-self are just concepts for interpreting phenomena. It is just a matter of definition. There is really no truth or untruth to either perspective.
So would be safe to assume that your will power above all else will dictate whether u succeed or not rather than your physical state?
what stage magicians can do with trick that make you see what is not happening
may have some clues
Wow. Such a beautiful insightful idea about reincarnatino right at the end. Thank you Susan!
power oriented
If the Self is an illusion then it follows that the Self cannot define anything including itself or the notion of illusion.
In short, the Self is consciousness personalized.
Correct, the lecture could have concluded by that statement
Well Said..... consciousness seems to need a personified prop
Kim M. Clark, OD can you explain more accurately please ? It’s quite accurate but it’s me my problem.. I couldn’t listen to her it annoyed:) so self is my consciousness right ? My only simple self my mind myself just without egos and that’s it ?!!
@@travisbickle8008 I would say its your self-awareness.
@@travisbickle8008 I would say its your self-awareness.
Bravo, the best video I've seen on the reality behind the sense of self. Very comprehensive overview, to the point, and articulated clearly. The only CZcams video I've seen that I think would make as good a brief introduction as this, is of an Alan Watts recording. It's titled (very unfortunately, as his view on the cycle of rebirth is actually the same "during life, not between lives" interpretation as Susan's) "Reincarnation - Alan Watts". Surely there's no higher praise than that.
Gooood job...
So explain the the difference between ego , self, and PERSONALITY.
Why I am crying??
I would never pay money for talks like this...perhaps helpful for some..but, I trust my own understanding of reality
Oh god I fucking love this! Great lecture! :)
She talks about letting go of the self. Who or what lets go of it? There's an abiding awareness capable of using language both before and after the loss of the ordinary sense of the self as a separate, solid, distinct being. There is continuity of memory and the ability to talk about experiences being had, even if the third person and passive voice are preferred. (Should she have refrained from using the word "I" in this talk?) Am "I" talking about the same kind of experience as "she" is, though? There are different kinds of experiences that can be described as letting go of the self.
@Stephen Paul King: Consciousness might not actually make a difference for real life actions at all. Thought processes that may be ultimately non conscious, at some point, obviously do make a difference. But consciousness itself could actually be epiphenomenal.
The pre - consciousness thought... for a while.
We make this huge presumption in our culture that what we are: shares the limits of our mind. It's a huge presumption; in fact, we believe if we presume it so - we presume it to be so absolutely true that we don't even realize it's a presumption. Its so obvious - LQQK @ all these Pl. each with there own _________! (Awareness) for lack of a word 4or [IT]..... We don't stop to think that there's no evidence for it.
It is all only oneness playing a game of hide and seek. That exposes what it sees as the myth of separation and personal enlightenment.
There is only one self Illusion and that is Susan
For there to be an experiencer having a stream of experiences only breaks down if you look at reality through the confines of reductionism. The fact that isolated brain processes never come together in one place, as she says, means nothing if consciousness is not reduced to brain activity. Rather than throw out her own irrational beliefs in favor of more logical alternatives like monistic idealism, she discards the self. This is the ultimate example of making reality conform to theory, rather than theory conform to reality.
AnduinX BYM It's a tricky area, I agree. But let's suppose that Idealism is correct. Does it THEN make sense to think of a continuing self? If we look at what is going on in conscious experience, the answer is not obvious. I might be a string of momentary selves, each apparently, but not actually, connected to the previous one. Memory can deceive us into connecting the dots. In fact, self B can never tell whether or not it was self A. Experientially, it is impossible to decide.
Holy Moly
What is the self? I don't think that the self can be defined by temporal things like personality and memory, because personality and memory can change radically through our lives. I do not think that our self is reducible to our sense of self-awareness either. Our sense of self-awareness is simply another temporal experience. it is just the experience of self-reflection.
I think the best definition for the self is _that which has experience._ Even if you get amnesia and forget who you are the self does not 'die' because the experiencer persists.
_"I might be a string of momentary selves, each apparently, but not actually, connected to the previous one. Memory can deceive us into connecting the dots. In fact, self B can never tell whether or not it was self A. Experientially, it is impossible to decide."_
While it might be impossible to know if we are experiencing continuity from a single perspective, that is what our experience suggests. Unless there is reason to believe that we are jumping between perspectives I see no reason to assume that this is the case.
Even if we were though, there is still only the qualia show and the experiencer. The personality and memories of self A and self B may differ, but the experiencer remains the same. The experiencer is the true self.
AnduinX BYM I agree with what you said. The Self is the one that has experience. It is always there and it is continuous as we experience it. This is not about what we believe, what others tell us to believe. It is what we experience, that is it.
Much of the confusion comes due to reductionism creeping in. Susan Blackman is a great one for that. One minute she is talking consciousness, the next there brain. Assumption: consciousness is the brain. Result: we let others to tell us what we should believe. We begin to deny our own experience.
The minute one tried to say the brain does this or that, it has this or that, one is not talking about consciousness. No one will deny the brain is important for consciousness but it is not consciousness itself.
However, it is amazingly easy to slip into this way of thinking. Much of the debate on this topic heads off in all kinds of blind alleyways as a result.
One does not need to be a Cartesian dualist either. Consciousness cannot be located in space, any more than any emerging phenomena can. Try locating the economy, the society, a culture and the like in space. One is unable to do that. Does it mean they do not exist? No. Does it mean that they can be reduced to its basic constituents, no. Are they ghost like entities floating about in space, no.
I am confused by some of these comments.As I pointed out in the beginning, Sue Blackmore is still the reductive physicalist she was. The same old Sue.
It is true that it is very easy for a physicalist to argue that there is no ongoing, unique self. This is because there is no conceivable relation between past and future brain states that would quality as numerical identity.
If you are an agnostic, a dualist or an Idealist, it isn't much more difficult to cast doubt on the ongoing self. If you follow my argument through (above) you should see that there is a conceivable state of illusion, such that being in that state is indistinguishable from having a continuous self.
If you want to hold the view that we are what we seem to be, you need (a) to refute physicalism, and (b) address the problem of illusion that I have offered.
Holy Moly I believe I have addressed the issues more than once, my cinema example, my feeling pain going to doctor example. There can be more but they should be adequate.
The big point is self is not brain. No amount of pointing to the brain and looking at its functioning can provide a jot of evidence to the undeniably subjective experience we all have. We do not have to provide evidence. My Self does not need to prove my Self.
That is it.
If one wishes to claim 'The self is an illusion' as Susan does, she has to provide the evidence. We do not.
For some reason,
I prefer the question:
Am I aware now?
To
Am I conscious now?
What is aware of the comings and goings of the "selves" You have to have something aware to say there is no self
Wacky weird Susan Blackmore...you've got to love her...and her arguments are compelling.
I'm still in doubt.
is she related to Ritchie.
There are two choices. 1. I am body. 2. I am prior even to the concept of body. Or, you could ask if I am in a body or is the body appearing in me? The primal awareness seems to be pre concept and thus prior to all forms. What do you, through belief, equate your self as? Has any belief ever been the constant? Is Turiya even the constant? :)))))
I find this unsatisfying the concept of multiple relatively autonomous short lived selves. And also this are you conscious now bit. I feel that I am conscious now but what I tend to feel myself being conscious about is sometimes great things like enjoying being with a friend or other times feeling uncomfortable in a group of people that I don't know very well and I can't think of anything interesting to say or I might be thinking that guy is so full of shit or that I'm so good at my job when things are going well. So these in some sense could be lots of different states of feeling but because we have memories we can access and remember these different states it's like saying we know our strengths and weaknesses. For me there's too much of a feeling that there is one self that is sometimes self-liking in good times and self not liking at other times. I have come across this other idea that the true self is not your thoughts that there is an inner true self that is happy and calm and all the thoughts crap can get in the way at times and get all your body physiology and emotions going that is not conducive to a nice peaceful existence whether it be a sense of anger or injustice or sadness or whatever. However when interactions with the world are going well we get the endorphins going and the world is great. For me I feel like I do have a self that sometimes gives itself a hard time and other times is quite happy with itself but it's almost like there is an underlying deeper self that is observing all these different states of happiness being carried out, maybe a sense of this deeper self is what I get at when I ask am I conscious now. Unfortunately it's this higher level self interacting with the environment and maybe getting stressed that I am more often than not conscious of.
yes of course. that is literally the definition of mental states..
do you mean to diminish their importance with such a statement?
What is illusion? Something that's not real? But if reality is not real, then what is illusion?
when one incompetently mixes the results of metaphysical inquiry into everyday practices, one gets diagnosis of schizophrenia.
She said the self is not what it is. She then said I can show you it is the case because this is not how the brain work's.
So her premise is that the self must directly reflect how the brain works. Why?
ian. spence Your defence system is stronger than the Pentagon.
You have no answers to the simplest questions to your curious brand of Zen, let alone the big questions in any field and of life. You could not take criticisms and you could not learn. You are a child in every respect. Keep living in your comfort zone of your intellectual glass house. Cherrio, LOL.
Debunking, the problem with these reductionist is that you could study the brain and its chemicals forever but you would not know what it is " like " being human by studying the brain that knowledge is only understood by living the life as a human being not by studying the brain. Knowledge isn't a chemical reaction.
"...the idea that if you concentrate enough on yourself then your non-existence becomes clear to you."
sam harris calls it meditation. you actively turn off that part of your brain through a form of meditation..(prefrontal etc.) its an experience similar to ecstasy, lsd, mdma etc only not as profound but you do get a sense of separation from what we call self.
No, Buddha says that there is no self, Anatta ... But Susan is the best person in consciousness so far as I know.
The buddha also denied that there was no self. Non-self not No-Self.
5:54 “how does my self seem to be unified” well I think it is unified I mean a single self at one particular moment not necessarily over time. If not, think about people with Dissociative identity Disorder, they feel there are many people inside a single body so something is integrated to give the feeling of a single self.
Well the fact that we synthesize these thoughts and feelings into language and pictures would pretty much mean that it is happening somewhere. All these lecturers argue there is no separate entity, but the real question whether there is a separate sphere or higher realm of consciousness. That's probably what people would argue to be called our soul.
The word "I" and the number "3" are of similar orders of reality (all numbers, actually). They both impose boundaries... Rather than representing "real" things ..
Another probable "idea" or "thought" to ponder and ask more about the origin and Nature of, are THOUGHTS. What are thoughts?..no substance, no matter or mass that we can "think" about. Thoughts are totally inmaterial and there they are and we "think" that is what we are.
*Whose illusion?*
+poolerboy0077 Who cares if this is an "illusion!" What a damn wonderful Nothing this happening is!
+poolerboy0077 You mean yourself and myself?
But if it's an illusion, how can you separate yourself from it, and how do you know that you are not under a further illusion?
You need a brain to contemplate, you need conscious for the brain to work. Conscious+ brain = self.
Okay. I'm going to go now and argue with myself. Thank you for this discussion.
The theory that susan puts forward of moment to moment rebirth is held by some buddhists. Myself included.
The camera should be fixed showing the whole stage and not moved. Zooming in and out makes it unpleasurable to watch.
Pure awareness if void of content. It is Aware only of Awareness..BEING. Blank "knowingingness" Personality is just a thought about another thought about a "person" both of which arise within the blank Awareness or "knowingness" and are not separate from Awareness. Not sure how to answer the question on responsibility? If Awareness is essentially everything and not separate from all that arises you could say Awareness is responsible for everything or nothing
Ego aside, you are simply a self aware entity. Seemingly brought about by the functions of the brain. When the body dies the self awareness falls away. If this self awareness has happened once, ie the life you have just experienced, it seems likely that another brain will experience the same self awareness at some point in the future, and has probably been experienced numerous times in the past. The ego is the story of “me”. “I” is the experience of self awareness. “Me” dies, “I” survives. IMHO
and add to this block universe theory that traits past, present and future as the same real and co-existing thigs.
me from now will not continue to exist in the future but continue to be in this moment eternally. What it means?
18:00 was excellent
Oddly puppet like, made me think of this-- "If you wish to understand any spiritual teachers lineage, you only need imagine him dangling from marionette lines of which he is unaware,spouting off about free will, the hand of Maya above, controlling everything." Jed Mckenna
If her self is an illusion I suggest she give up breathing or eating food and see how long the illusion persists?
Our sense of self manifests as individual consciousness unique and expressive of oneness displacing the space we take up. We have form and function which continually arises and passes away. The only illusion being our sense perception imposing an energetic limitation on our personal consciousness which remains infinite in it's essential nature.
Oh dear.
Anything possessing any sign is illusory.
At times, she mixes "being mindful" and "being conscious of something". They are different phenomenon.
And the me-selves have some consistent behaving patterns, which gives us the sense of having a personal self - and different sides to it.
And there is "some subject" that perceives the different states of mind and the changes of, what I call, different me-selves. I-I.
From the Paṭicca-Samuppāda (Antecedental Concurrence) we learned that:
Life originated unconsciously, which means the process of evolution of life continued when
inanimate matter began to struggle for existence unconsciously;
Life evolved until consciousness came into being with the evolution of the Human Being, but
even the Human Being has not evolved to become fully conscious, though only partially
conscious;
The Human Being became conscious of the objective world through completion of sense
experience (Phassa);
The Subjective Self (Atta) came into being when the emotional reaction (Taṇhā) to
sensations led to personalization (Upādāna) of the reaction as “mine” and alienating the
Objective World (Loka) as “not mine”;
With the SELF as a construct of the mind, we begin to think of the SELF in terms of a PAST,
PRESENT, and FUTURE - this means TIME is a construct of the mind, and so is SPACE;
Because the emotional reaction is based on the BODY, personalising the emotional reaction
became personalising the body. This means the BODY that was personalized became the SELF.
The past, present, future of the SELF becomes the past, present, future of the BODY.
Past of the body is BIRTH , the future of the body is DEATH, and in between birth and death
there is AGING - this is also the birth, death, and aging of the SELF;
This is the existence of a SELF in a WORLD that is subject to insecurity;
This is the insecure DREAM OF EXISTENCE. We also learned from the Paṭicca-Samuppāda that all phenomenon arise dependent on
conditions.
What is dependent on conditions is unstable (Anicca);
What is unstable is insecure (Dukkha);
What is unstable and insecure is not as I want;
What is not as I want is not under my power;
What is not under my power is not mine;
What is not mine is not my “SELF” (Anattā);
This line of thinking is the awakening from the Dream of Existence.
Are Self and Observer the same?
Self is an illusion, so is Observer too?
Define your terms. Ramana Maharshi said "abide in the self"....
What did Ramana mean by self? She's talking about the self you think you are in relation to everything else is an illusion that 'I am such and such' ie that you're separate from you environment. Ramana perhaps meant the godhead'self' and the individuated self is a hoax.
The "I am such and such" is what Ramana Maharshi called the ego. The unchanging subject (consciousness) that is conscious of "I am such and such (I am a man, I am a carpenter, I am angry), is what Ramana called the Self/I am/Godhead.
Yes, exactly, mvigoren34. But here's the kicker - does that awareness have a personality? Is it responsible for anything? It's easy - check and see.
Who is giving this talk then? :P
This is a very good summary of my own thoughts.
It leaves me puzzled at the step of other people's lifes, though:
It clearly follows that I can and should make sure that my own future selfs suffer as little as possible (to put it as metaphysically as she does; it's obviously intended as a simplification, just a bit less simple than the "I am conscious always" simplification just abandoned; let's stick with this new simplification until it has been explored deeply enough before moving on based on that new understanding).
It also follows that I can and should allow other people's selfs to suffer as little as possible. Since I am not a single stream of consciousness, and other streams or instances exist inside even my own body, this means I am even closer to other people in a way, because I myself am not just one 'soul', so to speak. So 'other' is something I can apply to myself and other people.
She then went on to explain how it's not that awful to die, seeing how we sort of always die. This is also what I had thought about before. It's just that no next stream inside us will come to exist; but there's other streams outside us, and if we've been as caring towards others as we were towards ourselves, then we can extend our wish for survival to other people, thus losing the burden of wanting to always live.
That all being (in a simplified way) true:
What exactly would be immoral about murdering a suffering homeless person rather than helping them become happy? You are preventing unhappy streams from arising just as you would if you helped them. You do prevent happy streams from arising, but you also do this by not having as many children as you can support; and I don't think there's a moral obligation to create as many potentially happy life forms as possible, otherwise we'd be really just a virus.
So - why not just murder people who have noone who'd be sad to miss them and dispose of the corpses so as not to traumatize anyone else? Given that we'd have opportunity for a perfect murder, should we not commit it, as long as the person dying is likely to be unhappy? Likewise, should we not commit suicide as soon as we can see that our near future would be unhappy? We're not actually killing any stream of consciousness, we're just stopping new ones from forming.
Or is there a difference between not actively creating new ones by reproduction and actively removing the existing possibility of streams, even if those are highly likely to be unhappy?
Don't get me wrong, I want to find a logically valid way to explain to myself why murder is wrong in any circumstance. With perhaps the exclusion being unhappiness that cannot possibly be fixed (say, terminal illness in conjunction with severe pain).
Likewise, I want to find a logical way to explain to myself why I should not get high on the strongest drugs I can get my hands on, probably Fentanyl, and then overdose and happily slip away where noone will find me? This would mean that from now to my death, I'd make sure that as many happy streams as possible exist, and as few unhappy ones as possible. So if that was my sole goal, suicide by overdose (in a way that knocks me out before it suffocates me) would seem like the most logical way to proceed, would it not?
Clearly not, but that's just my intuition screaming no.
Currently, I hold an opinion based on a rather complex and perhaps too constructed view:
Murder must be wrong and likewise drug-induced suicide (unless in extreme cases) if there's an objective reason to keep a population that currently exists alive, and produce offspring, but at a very sustainable rate. So basically, we're back to square one, looking for a meaning of life.
Which I can conveniently claim to be self-evident: Scientific exploration, so as to answer all unanswered questions. Prior to the point of maximum knowledge, a question as all-encompassing as the meaning of life cannot even be asked. Since that point is unlikely to ever be reached, I am lead to believe that the meaning of life is to continue research in the faint hope (and equally, faintly in fear of) reaching that point that makes everything clear. Since, again, this point is probably non-existant, we'd be able to use research as an infinite excuse to continue living as a society.
Now that the life of 'society', and moreso, a free, research-welcoming society without fear, is our primary goal, we can explain why getting rid anyone is a bad idea: Attempting to fix one's (and other peoples') problems is not only part of our goal (because knowledge can be gained from it), but any person willing to continue living can contribute, however small, to the greater goal of attaining more knowledge.
This might lead to the other extreme of judging people by their usefulness to science, but I think I can construct a way to counter this, too:
For science to move onward, history has proven that both security and freedom of the population are the best conditions. The feeling of being both secure and free can, to the best of our knowledge, only be attained by fair laws and fair law enforcement. Therefore, to feel as safe as possible, it's necessary for me to know that noone will do anything that I have not allowed them to do, to me. So noone will murder me in my sleep without my consent. This, however, once again sort of pre-supposes individual identity.
Though one could argue that identity is very different from consciousness, in that one person can, from birth to death, have one identity (although one that changes), which is the sum of the consciousnesses present in one body. This only works as long as we clearly separate bodies, which might be problematic when looking at fringe cases such as artifical intelligence.
Given that the materialistic world view is mostly right, AI would be equally capable of having consciousness (and rights) as humans. But without the limitation of a body. So what does that imply morally and legally?
All these questions support my general idea that gaining more knowledge and understanding seems to be a good temporary (and possibly permanent) goal, if only for myself.
Either way, this lecture was quite enlightening in one way: Even though I already held almost all of the beliefs Susan put forth in this, I have now gained a new respect for meditation and mindfulness. Psychotherapists have always annoyed me with their insistence on the usefulness of these methods, and I never saw the point; but this video proves how they can lead to very interesting observations if combined with critical analysis, so maybe I've been doing the people who recommended these things an injustice.
DISCLAIMER: I strongly oppose the killing of people under any circumstance other than self defense or defense of other innocent people. I strongly oppose thoughts of suicide under any circumstances other than permanent, unbearable pain and under medical and legal supervision. I strongly oppose abusing drugs to create artificial happiness, and even more strongly I oppose using drugs to deliberately overdose. Please do not take my post as an endorsement of any such activities, I am entertaining philosophical trains of thought, not condoning any real life actions based on half-baked ideas.
Antonio Damasio also writes about there being a lack of cohesive location for our mental experience. Like she does, he says it's happening all over the place and only appears to be unified. In Descartes Error, he describes in detail how the body and brain the experiences we call self - memories, body sensations etc. and I found this very helpful in dissecting what I think of and label as 'me'.
''happening all over the place and APPEARS to be unified'' appears to whom?
I love her.
She's a disillusion within an illusion ... an absolute spiritual nightmare within a dream. Thank God, she's just human. *POOF!* Cheers
She so easily dismisses reincarnation. She is so sure of her answers.
she has a very poor grasp of anything besides neuroscience
If theres no self theres no reincarnation
wawa..wait! where's the LovingAllAwarenss&DivineRebirth? where you goin'?
It would be so surprising that french-spoken researchers propose those ideas, in french. Why don’t they do so ?
Hi there
But...,I see You....?
(One could set up a measurement of time delay when 2 people or more interact.
It does not matter at what level your self is aware and operating. Others will see you and make you out.)
i get what she's saying, however, according to her line of thinking of death and rebirth of the self, i think reincarnation would be a natural next conclusion yet she denies it
In a dream the brain creates a self.. you are told it's you.
You say things that you would not say did things you would not do. Are you conscious in a dream ?
I see what you mean but Is not importance itself, just another example of one of these said things that isn't real. Somewhat of a conundrum I guess. I enjoy reading your comments btw. Your a deep thinker indeed.
"The self is an illusion", "the self is not what we think", This woman is great at absolutely sounding like she is an idiot. How can she claim the self is not what we think when by definition if it isn't what we think we cannot know it isn't what we think. We would have to be aware of what self really is to claim it isn't what we think it is. Do people really think these idiots are teaching spirituality ? Lol
I think what she is saying is the word 'self' with its meaning that you can look up in the dictionary isn't the actual living self any more than this following word in this very comment: 'tree'... is the actual living thing that's out in your yard. You can't know or prove the map isn't the territory...but you can see the map obviously isn't the actual territory...in other words if you’re planning a trip to Florida you're not going to take a trip to Florida by staying home and looking at the map of Florida instead of going to actual Florida. The world as thought about and worded is included in but is not the same as the world as it really is.
If you're approaching a mirage of water on a road or the desert...you just simply know it's an illusion...you don't have to know the water that isn't really there. You simply know real water and realize that the mirage wasn't real water. She is saying that the self as it is thought about is the self as it is thought about, she's not implying she knows with words the 'self that isn't what we think'...she simply is the self which isn't what we think, which is beyond the words 'we cannot know it isn't what we think'. Those who aren't trapped in thought and 'are IT' instead of knowing IT only...can tell the difference between the ‘thought of self’ and 'that which lies beyond definition'.
If anyone does think that the word is the actual thing maybe they should try jumping out of an airplane with the word 'parachute' instead of an actual parachute or go on a camping trip with the words 'water', and 'food' instead of actual water and food (after all… you don't know that the words parachute, water and food aren't the actual things so why not try?).
If you're secure in and choose to spend your life exclusively within the field of thoughts and words and not ever experience transcendence of 'who you think you are' I totally respect that.
Foldisfitch
You might be able to have experience without the sense of a self, but this does not remove the necessity for an experiencer. I don't think it makes sense to talk about having experience without that which has experience.
AnduinX BYM It's not that 'that which has an experience' doesn't exist but that 'that which has an experience' doesn't exist as a completely cut off separate entity from experience. It cannot exist independently of the context of experience (try imagining an experiencer existing without being in the context of some experience). The experiencer and experience are both 'two different ends of the same stick'.
This can't be explained with language because that task is like a mirror attempting to reflect its very self. It can only be pointed to with words...just like you would point out the real ocean to someone with the word ocean. It is living, moving, everchanging and can't be totally contained in words. Again...'the world as described is included in but not the same as the world as it is'...
The following two paragraphs are selections from two different books by Alan W. Watts who is very good at explaining stuff like this:
Standard average European (SAE) languages, for example, have sentences so structured that the verb (event) must be set in motion by the noun (thing)---thereby posing a metaphysical problem as tricky, and probably as meaningless, as that of the relation of mind to body. We cannot talk of 'knowing' without assuming that there is some 'who' or 'what' that knows, not realizing that this is nothing more than a grammatical convention. The supposition that knowing requires a knower is based on a linguistic and not an existential rule, as becomes obvious when we consider that raining needs no rainer and clouding needs no clouder.
To become the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. For it implies that experience is not something in which one is trapped or by which one is pushed around, or against which one must fight. The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity: the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event which happens, not 'to' me or 'from' me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become a single, everchanging, self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety.
Foldisfitch
I have no problems with this explanation, as long as awareness and experience are accounted for. To say that awareness and experience are not separate entities is similar to my view as a monistic idealist. I take consciousness to be the foundation of reality, not matter.
AnduinX BYM there are two facets to the 'self illusion'. The first is as you describe; there is no distinction between experiencer and experienced. The second tells us that 'we' are continuing consciousness. We aren't. There are just discreet consciousnesses at every moment, and the illusion is the false impression that they are one.
Sounds to me like materialism ad absurdum. Science can't and maybe never will be able to study the hard problem of consciousness, so it just doesn't exist. Great. All you have to do is ignore every basic perception you've ever had.
yes,happiness do not exist independent upon some living being,it is subjective in relation to reality,while it is objective in relation to humans,why ?, because it exist, but it still is an illusion.
If you cut. Slice of bread in half you get more, get your head around that.
So many things that are real to humans are very unreal and nonexistent in true reality. Things like desire, love, beliefs..... all manufactured in the mind.
One day, maybe quite soon, this current presumption of physicalism is going to look like what it is: An unsubstantiated act of faith. What is this 'physical world'? Is it fundamental? Actually, we have no idea.
Holy Moly Well, science already tell us that 100% that there is stuff beyond the physical world. Not a shred of doubt about it. No one would or can deny it.
The day has arrived. In fact, it has arrived many years ago.
dubunking Oh, and about time! Can you provide a link to where science tells us this?
Let me get this straight from the start. If anyone thinks that the universe is just nature and nature is defined by materials in whatever shapes and forms i.e. particles, waves, quantum fields of whatever is the latest 'materials' that pysiclais tell us, then science itself has already provided 100% solid evidence that the universe is MORE THAN nature.
Are we starting from this page?
Not really. On the previous page still. What is this 100% solid evidence provided by science?
Holy Moly Well, assuming we are starting from the same page:
That there exists only nature and nature is defined as materials defined by physicists at any point time, it is universally accepted that the laws of nature is written in mathematics.
Mathematics has no known location, shapes or forms. Mathematical symbols are contingent rather than necessary. It does not reside in time and space.
Mathematics is by definition not part of nature. Hence the laws of nature is not part of nature.
What is really interesting though is nature can only be adequately described by stuff that are not part of it. Why?
What the heck she is talking about? Sometimes you shift between states of mind..... being conscoius and being conscious that you are conscious. She doesn't give any answers, only raises stupid questions and makes stupid conclusions.
If its illusion, what is being duped if not self?
We know how brain works, but mind is a paradox.
Dennet uses his consciousness to dismiss consciousness, he's all out of better ideas how mind works.
Consciousness is impersonal , being conscious of anything whether the one's self or a sound in the ambiance is still consciousness. How ever she seems to define being conscious of one's self only as consciousness, which is wrong.also,just because one cannot recall what s/he was conscious at some point in the past doesn't mean s/he was not conscious at that time.
She comes out with a concept that the self is different at different points of time and not exactly the same self. So long as one attaches attributes and memories to the self what she says appears to be true, but the true self is bereft of all attributes and memories and hence constant.
"but the true self is bereft of all attributes and memories and hence constant"
That's a very thought provoking statement, and it got me thinking about the relationship between the self and memories. Memory is very complex, and it isn't simply limited to remembering events in your life. Muscle memory, language, reflexive memory and phenomenal memory play a crucial role in how we understand our reality and out relation to it. Experience's and knowledge change the very structure of the brain. To remove them, the brain would be left with irreparable damaged since every memory exists as a network of neurons interacting with others. Here's an analogy, if every physical link between the network of server's and computers was destroyed, the internet would seize to exist. Sure all the information within all of the hard drives in the world would still be intact, but the entire modern world be devastated become we've come to rely on the net for so many things. If all of persons memories were lost, not only would self be lost, but I doubt he would even be functional.
Each waking moment, new consciousness is generated by the brain, as new photons come from a flame each moment, instead of there really being a single flame entity moving across time. So even consciousness is not constant, it just seems that way because many instants of consciousness' content consists of the content of memories activated by the brain, and identification with those memories.
...after viewing an older Blackmore talk where Darwin was the non-ad-hominem hero, she realized that The Buddha got even technically and vertically deeper. Nice. Someone has hit Turquoise. :) The Triple Helix???
they said this or that...say about your experiences not borrowed knowledge...! all you say or just going round and round...!...why dont you hit the center...!
Wow can't sit through this. No wonder swami's say women are not eligible for Mukti.
So how is she giving this talk? Or live in general?
No self. We don't decide.
We are just mere Observer(Conscious beings).
you're confused.
1 corinthians 15-31 "Everyday i die"